Mezzetin, a stock comic character of the Italian commedia dell'arte, became an established performer on the Paris stage. Various players were engraved in his costume, which by about 1680 comprised a jacket and knee-britches, a floppy hat, a ruff, and a short cape. Mezzetin was by turns interfering, devious, and lovelorn, but not languorous. His head and his large, angular hands are extraordinarily expressive.

Watteau, the son of a roofer, left Valenciennes for Paris about 1702 to work there as a copyist and assistant to Claude Gillot (1673–1722) and Claude III Audrun (1658–1734). He became interested in theater and fell under the spell of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). In 1709 he returned to Valenciennes but no later than 1712 had settled in Paris and presented himself to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture for admission. Exceptionally, he was immediately invited to submit his reception piece. This he completed only in 1717: it was titled "le pélerinage à Lisle de Citere," or "Pilgrimage to the Island of Cythera" (Musée du Louvre, Paris), but then the title was crossed out and replaced in the Académie records with the term "feste galante," which can be described as a sub-genre of Watteau's invention, in which he depicted elegant people amusing themselves in bucolic outdoor settings. Watteau was in London in 1717; back in Paris by 1720, and seriously ill, he moved to the country where he died of tuberculosis in 1721.

"Mezzetin", a small canvas which was probably painted between 1718 and 1720, is one of Watteau's most brilliant inventions. A comic character, he is depicted with his guitar in the traditional beret, ruff, striped jacket, and knee-britches of the commedia dell'arte, a vernacular musical theater that was popular with all classes of Paris society. Mezzetin was devious and a troublemaker; he pined for love. The highly colored and expressive bearded head and large hands of the figure were first drawn in colored chalks from a model (the Museum is fortunate to own the head study, 37.165.107; see Additional Images), in accordance with the artist's usual practice. The picture once belonged to Catherine the Great of Russia.

P. Hédouin. "Watteau: Catalogue de son oeuvre." L'Artiste, 4th ser., 5 (November 30, 1845), p. 78, no. 43, as the portrait of an actor from the Comédie-Italienne that was for a time on sale in the reading room of M. Branger, rue Laffitte.

Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt. Journal entry. 1865 [see Ref. Rosenberg 1984, p. 363, who cites this passage as appearing in "Journal des Goncourt's, mémoires de la vie littéraire," 1888, vol. 2, pp. 245–46, under the date 1865; it was not possible to find the citation in the 1956 Flammarion edition], describe the hands of Mezzetin in this painting [English trans. from Rosenberg 1984]: "how they live, how they speak . . . these pedigreed arched, curved, hands—angry and languid and tormented, these hands of an invalid, of an artist, of capricious elegance tortured, almost diabolic . . .".

Edmond de Goncourt. Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé d'Antoine Watteau. Paris, 1875, pp. 80–81, no. 86, describes three paintings of Mezzetin by Watteau: an oval on canvas ("H. 20 p., L. 17 p.") [21.3 x 18.1 in., apparently our picture, which was once framed as an oval]; a smaller picture on wood ("H. 1 pied, l. 9 p."), in the sale of the painter Coypel in 1753; and a third on wood ("H. 9 p., L. 7 p."), in the sale of Jullienne's widow in 1778; states that one of these three pictures figures is no. 1503 in the collection of the Hermitage.

Alexander Benua. Putevoditel po kartinnoi galereye imperatorskago Ermitazha [Guide to the Paintings Galleries of the Hermitage]. St. Petersburg, [192?], pp. 172–75, no. 1503, ill. p. 153, places it in Watteau's last years, possibly even after his return from England.

Émile Dacier and Albert Vuaflart. Jean de Jullienne et les graveurs de Watteau au XVIIIe siècle. Vol. 3, Catalogue. Paris, 1922, pp. 100–101, no. 215, list Watteau's paintings of this subject: one in the sale of Charles-Antoine Coypel, a smaller one in the La Haye sale of 1754, one with Jean de Jullienne and included in his sale, an oval that measured 45.9 x 54.9 cm [the MMA painting], and one that was in the posthumous sale of Mme de Jullienne in 1778, which they believe is possibly identifiable with the "Donneur de sérénade" in the Musée Condé; mention the picture in the Hermitage [now MMA], not connecting it with the painting in the Jullienne sale; observe that the costume appears in the "Livre de scènes comiques inventées par Gillot".

K. T. Parker. Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum. Vol. 1, Netherlandish, German, French and Spanish Schools. Oxford, 1938, p. 270, observes that a red chalk drawing of Mezzetin (cat no. 560), which he ascribes to "?Watteau," shows a close affinity to the MMA picture.

Art Treasures of the Metropolitan: A Selection from the European and Asiatic Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1952, p. 230, no. 127, ill. (color).

Charles Sterling. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of French Paintings. Vol. 1, XV–XVIII Centuries. Cambridge, Mass., 1955, pp. 105–8, ill., states that Watteau did not depict particular actors; places the picture in Watteau's latest period, about 1719; is convinced that it was the Mezzetin described in Jullienne's sale as an upright oval.

K. T. Parker and J. Mathey. Antoine Watteau: Catalogue complet de son œuvre dessiné. Paris, 1957, vol. 2, pp. 337, 339, under no. 726, relate the MMA study for Mezzetin's head to a series of drawings made in preparation for Crozat's Seasons in about 1712–13; find the model in this study particularly close to the head of a man in a red and black chalk drawing in the Jousset collection, Paris (no. 510).

Charles Sterling. Great French Painting in the Hermitage. New York, [1958], p. 231 n. 12.

J. Mathey. Antoine Watteau: Peintures réapparues . . . Paris, 1959, pp. 36, 55, 68, identifies the model as the one who posed for Watteau's sketches of male nudes, dating it April 1715, when Watteau was again living with Crozat.

José de Azeredo Perdigão. Calouste Gulbenkian, Collector. Lisbon, 1969, pp. 109–10, 113, 229, describes Gulbenkian's negotiations in May and June of 1930 with the U.S.S.R. for the purchase from the Hermitage of Houdon's Diana, Rembrandt's Pallas Athene, and four other paintings, including the MMA Mezzetin.

Ronald Paulson. Emblem and Expression: Meaning in English Art of the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, Mass., 1975, pp. 95–97, fig. 49, observes that here "Mezzetin, the coarse servant, has become a rather delicate figure".

Oliver T. Banks. Watteau and the North: Studies in the Dutch and Flemish Baroque Influence on French Rococo Painting. PhD diss., Princeton University. New York, 1977, pp. 121, 183–84, figs. 35, 119 (overall and detail), relates our Mezzetin to several Dutch baroque paintings with musicians and notes that "the single figure of a musician often served as a vanitas allegory symbolizing the transience of pleasure".

Donald Posner. Antoine Watteau. Ithaca, N.Y., 1984, pp. 57–58, 206, 208, 224–25, 258, 288 n. 16, colorpl. 48, observes that the same sitter seems to have posed for a number of Watteau's studies and was therefore almost certainly a professional model.

Marianne Roland Michel. Watteau: An Artist of the Eighteenth Century. New York, 1984, pp. 156–58, 204, 266, 269, 272–73, fig. 144, colorpl. 38 (detail of head), dates it towards 1717–19, later than the Chantilly Mezzetin, and considers it likely to be a portrait of someone close to the artist.

Pierre Rosenberg et al. inWatteau, 1684–1721. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1984, pp. 246, 362–65, no. 49, ill. p. 363 (color), fig. 10 (Audran engraving), comments on the presence of the same statue in the well-known engraving depicting Watteau and Jullienne together (fig. 1), and suggests that "her" presence in both works may indicate that it was conceived as an allegorical portrait of Jullienne; notes that the figure of Mezzetin at the far left of "Harlequin, Emperor in the Moon" (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes)—which he ascribes to Watteau rather than Gillot, in or shortly after 1707—foreshadows the Mezzetin in the MMA picture; observes that identification of the MMA painting with the Mezzetin in Jullienne's 1767 sale has been wrongly questioned.

Margaret Morgan Grasselli inWatteau, 1684–1721. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1984, p. 188, calls the MMA drawing (cat. no. 110) a true preparatory study, probably made when the painting was already underway, and notes that the slight indications of the large beret sketched around the head show that Watteau had Mezzetin already in mind when he made it; finds unconvincing Parker and Methey's [Ref. 1957] identification of the sitter with the model who posed for nude studies for the Crozat Seasons.

Martin Eidelberg. "Watteau in the Atelier of Gillot." Antoine Watteau (1684–1721): Le peintre, son temps et sa légende. Ed. François Moureau and Margaret Morgan Grasselli. Paris, 1987, p. 55, pl. 63, notes that the pose of Mezzetin in the Nantes "Harlequin, Emperor in the Moon" and in the MMA painting "is a matter of theatrical convention and does not provide proof of authorship".

Kimerly Rorschach inClaude to Corot: The Development of Landscape Painting in France. Exh. cat., Colnaghi. New York, 1990, pp. 111–12, fig. 2, remarks that one would expect a graceful nude Venus to serve as garden statuary, and concludes that this statue, "draped in a fashion that approximates contemporary dress," must allude to a "more particular contemporary personage—the loved one".

Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat. Antoine Watteau, 1684–1721: Catalogue raisonné des dessins. Milan, 1996, vol. 2, p. 1048, date the MMA drawing about 1718, but are not convinced it is a study for our picture, in part because the ruff has been omitted.

Alan Wintermute. Watteau and His World: French Drawing from 1700 to 1750. Exh. cat., Frick Art Museum. London, 1999, p. 170, fig. 91, believes that Watteau made the chalk study after the composition of the painting was laid out.

Julie Anne Plax. Watteau and the Cultural Politics of Eighteenth-Century France. Cambridge, 2000, pp. 131, 135, 138–39, fig. 52, using this Mezzetin as a case in point, observes that "Watteau's Harlequins, Mezzetins, and Pierrots rarely match the physical types or the stylized postures and movements belonging to the characters that their costumes represent".

Julie Anne Plax. "Belonging to the In Crowd: Watteau and the Bonds of Art and Friendship." French Genre Painting in the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Philip Conisbee. Washington, 2007, pp. 53–54, 64–65, fig. 9, claims in error that this painting of Mezzetin was not included in Jean de Jullienne's "Oeuvre gravé" [but see Ref. Jullienne 1735], and argues that this collection of engravings "functioned as a promotional catalogue of works that could be purchased through Jullienne".

Colin B. Bailey inFrench Art of the Eighteenth Century at The Huntington. Ed. Shelley M. Bennett and Carolyn Sargentson. [San Marino, Calif.], 2008, p. 342, fig. 130, observes that this portrayal of Mezzetin "could not be further removed from his boorish theatrical persona".

An engraving of this painting by Benoît Audran was published in the Recueil Jullienne in 1735. The engraving shows the painting reversed; the legend states that it belonged to Jean de Jullienne (whose picture was described as an oval in his 1767 posthumous sale). The MMA painting was once framed as an oval, as the slight discoloration of its corners makes apparent.